Sermons & Letters 4

As the dignity of fathers is the honor of their sons, beloved, so the gladness of the people is the joy of the priest. And because this comes from a divine gift—for, as it is written, "every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights" (James 1:17)—we ought to give thanks to the Author of all good things, since whether in natural growth or in moral discipline, "He has made us, and not we ourselves" (Psalm 100:3); and when we confess this devoutly and faithfully, glorying not in ourselves but in the Lord, our vows are fruitfully renewed with the season, and religious feasts bring just rejoicings, in which we are neither ungrateful by keeping silence about His gifts, nor proud by presuming upon our own merits.

Let us therefore, beloved, refer the whole cause and ground of today's solemnity to its source and head; and let us praise Him with the due thanksgiving in whose hand are both the grades of offices and the moments of times. For if we look to ourselves and to our own things, we scarcely find anything for which we might deservedly rejoice. For surrounded by mortal flesh and subject to the frailty of corruption, we are never so free as not to be assailed by some attack; nor is so happy a victory won in this contest that revived struggles do not arise even after our triumphs. Hence no pontiff is so perfect, no bishop so spotless, that he ought not to offer the sacrifices of propitiation, not only for the sins of the people, but also for his own.

And if this condition holds for all priests in general, how much more does it both burden and bind us, for whom the very magnitude of the work we have undertaken is the most frequent occasion of offense. For although individual shepherds preside over their own flocks with special solicitude, and know that they will render an account for the sheep committed to them, yet to us the care of all is in common; nor is the administration of any one of them not a portion of our labor. So that, while from the whole world men flock together to the see of the blessed apostle Peter, and that universal love of the Church, entrusted by the Lord to that same Peter, is required also of our stewardship, we feel the burden press upon us so much the more, the more we owe to all.

In this matter, then, of our trepidation, what confidence would there be for us in discharging the service we owe, were it not that He who keeps Israel does not slumber nor sleep, and who said to His disciples: "Behold, I am with you all the days, even to the consummation of the age" (Matthew 28:20); were it not that He deigned to be not only the keeper of the sheep, but even the Shepherd of the shepherds themselves—He who indeed is not seen with bodily sight, but is felt with the spiritual heart; absent in the flesh, by which He could have been visible; present in the Godhead, by which He is everywhere and always wholly present? For "the just man lives by faith" (Habakkuk 2:4), and this is the righteousness of the believer: that he receives in his mind what he does not perceive with his sight;

the Lord, ascending on high, led captivity captive, and gave gifts to men (Psalm 68:18)—namely faith, and hope, and charity—which from that source are great, from that source strong, from that source precious, because what is not attained by the eyes of the flesh is, by a wondrous affection of the mind, both believed, and hoped, and loved. Here then is present, beloved, what we confess not rashly but faithfully: in the midst of believers is the Lord Jesus Christ; and although He sits at the right hand of God the Father, until He make His enemies the footstool of His feet (Psalm 110:1), yet the High Priest supreme is not absent from the assembly of His priests; and deservedly it is sung of Him by the mouth of the whole Church and of all priests: "The Lord has sworn, and He will not repent:"

"You are a Priest for ever according to the order of Melchizedek" (Psalm 110:4). For He Himself is the true and eternal High Priest, whose administration can have neither change nor end. He it is whose figure Melchizedek the priest prefigured, offering to God not Jewish victims, but immolating the sacrifice of that mystery which our Redeemer consecrated in His own body and blood. He it is whose priesthood the Father established to be celebrated perpetually—not according to the order of Aaron, which would pass away with the time of the Law, but according to the order of Melchizedek—with the firm assurance of an indissoluble oath.

For since an oath is employed among men with those definitions which are ratified by perpetual covenants, the attestation of the divine oath too is found in those promises which are fixed by unchangeable decrees; and because repentance indicates a change of will, God does not repent in that wherein, according to His eternal good pleasure, He cannot will otherwise than He has willed. It is not therefore for us, beloved, a presumptuous festivity, by which, mindful of the divine gift, we honor the day of the priesthood we have received; since we confess devoutly and truthfully that the work of our ministry, in all things that we rightly do, Christ accomplishes;

and we glory not in ourselves, who without Him can do nothing, but in Him who is our ability. Yet there is added to the reason of our solemnity not only the apostolic, but also the episcopal dignity of the most blessed Peter, who does not cease to preside over his see, and unfailingly holds his fellowship with the eternal Priest. For that solidity which he received from the Rock, Christ—he himself also being made a rock—he transfused also into his heirs; and wheresoever any firmness is shown, there without doubt appears the fortitude of the shepherd.

For if to nearly all the martyrs everywhere, in return for their endurance of the sufferings they underwent, this has been granted for the manifestation of their merits—that they can bring aid to those in peril, drive away diseases, expel unclean spirits, and heal countless infirmities—who will be so unskilled or so envious an appraiser of the glory of blessed Peter as to believe that any parts of the Church are not governed by his solicitude, not increased by his help? Wholly does there flourish and live in the prince of the apostles that love of God and of men which neither the bars of the prison, nor chains, nor the assaults of the populace, nor the threats of kings could affright; and an unconquerable faith, which did not yield in battle, nor grow lukewarm in conquering.

When therefore in our days sorrows are turned into gladness, labors into rest, discords into peace, we recognize that we are aided by the merits and prayers of our patron, and by frequent proofs we experience that he himself presides by salutary counsels, he himself by equitable judgments; so that, while the right of binding and loosing remains among us, through the moderation of the most blessed Peter both the condemned may be brought to penance and the reconciled to pardon.

And therefore, whatever office you have rendered today in us—whether by the kindly esteem of brethren, or by the devotion of sons—know that you have more devoutly and more truly bestowed it together with me upon him, to whose see we rejoice not so much to preside as to serve, hoping that it will be granted through his prayers that the God of mercies may graciously look upon the times of our ministry, and may ever deign to guard and to feed the shepherd of His sheep. (Most celebrated are St. Leo's sermons On the Collections; for they indicate certain particular collections which, although mentioned from Leo by many, no one has been able to find explained by anyone. Quesnel, in his note on the first sermon On the Collections, added this one remark:)

To heap up much here concerning the use and antiquity of the collections would be to labor at what is already done. Let whoever wishes consult the eminent Cardinal Baronius, at the year of Christ 44, nos. 30, 31, and at the year 58, no. 35. That these were customarily held in Leo's time not only on the Lord's Day is clear from sermons 2 and 3, where mention is made of the second and third weekday. Yet we believe that St. Leo in these sermons speaks not of the common collections, which were formerly held in all the Churches, but of an extraordinary and special gathering of alms, which, proclaimed and begun at a certain time of the year and on a fixed first day, was completed on the following days. The proclamation for a fixed day is clear from each sermon: for in the first sermon the collections are appointed on the Lord's Day,

in the second on the second weekday, in the third on the third weekday, in the fourth on the fourth weekday—or rather the fifth—in the fifth again on the first Lord's Day, and in the sixth the collections are appointed for the day of the Sabbath. Since these sermons were delivered in different years, in this variety of days some certain day of some month is doubtless indicated, which in one year fell on the Lord's Day, in another on the second weekday, in another on the third, and so on, and in the course of the years fell again on the Lord's Day. But the day mentioned in these sermons is called not the only day, but the first day of the collections in sermon 2, and in sermon 5, chapter 4, it is said: "On the first Lord's Day there will be a future collection." Therefore on other days other collections were made;

and likewise these collections were extended over several days. On these days the Romans, throughout the Churches of their districts, were obliged to come together for that distribution of alms which both means and piety urged, as is related in sermons 3 and 4, chapter 3, and in sermon 6, chapter 2. Now in Leo's time there were seven ecclesiastical districts in the City, each of which had its own deaconry, where there were hospitals and shelters for the poor, in which widows and other needy persons were sustained by ecclesiastical alms. See Mabillon, Commentary on the Roman Ordinal, vol. II of the Musaeum Italicum, p. 17. To these deaconries, then, the alms were to be brought, which through the care of those in charge served the necessary expenses;

for it is chiefly to the Church that every man seeking aid resorts, as Leo says in sermon 6, chapter 2. Now it remains, if it can be done, to establish the institution of these collections, and into what month they fell, and on what day of the month they began, and over how many days they were carried out. The institution is hinted at by the holy pontiff in sermons 3, 4, and 5, where he declares that collections of this kind were formerly introduced by the Fathers, so that on the very day on which the pagans served the devil with their superstitions, the Christians might more sacredly offer their oblations to God. For thus he says in sermon 2: "For the destruction of the snares of the ancient enemy, on the day on which the impious served the devil under the name of their idols, the first collection was most providently instituted in the holy Church." And more plainly in sermon 4, chapter 3:

"The day of the apostolic institution invites us, on which the first collection of holy contributions was prudently and usefully ordained by the Fathers, so that, because at this time a people once given to superstition served the demons, the most sacred oblation of our alms might be celebrated against the profane sacrifices of the impious." And because this was most fruitful for the growth of the Church, it pleased them that it should be perpetual. And in sermon 5, chapter 1, he attests that this institution was of profit to the ancients for the destruction of vanities. Two things are to be gathered from these. First, that by the ancient Fathers of the Church—who turned many other days polluted by superstitions into pious observances—some celebrated pagan superstition, by which profane sacrifices

—or certain oblations were offered on some celebrated day for the impious worship of idols—was turned into pious collections of this kind. Secondly, that this institution was so solemn and so useful to the Church that the same Fathers willed it to be perpetual; and therefore, although that superstition had been abolished, it still flourished in Leo's day. But further, what this superstition was, whence collections of this kind took their origin, and into what month and day they fell—from which the month and day of the collections might be determined—since St. Leo discloses nothing, must be gathered from elsewhere. In this matter the order of these sermons, which we find in some manuscripts, is of help. In the Vallicellian Lectionary A, 6, four of these sermons are contained.

They are described after the sermons for the day of Saints Peter and Paul, and before Leo's 84th sermon, which in the manuscript collections is assigned to the third, fourth, and fifth day of the octave of those same apostles; and the same order is detected in the codices of the second collection. Therefore both the superstitions already mentioned and collections of this kind seem to have fallen at the beginning of July. Now at the beginning of July the day before the Nones had been superstitious, on which the pagans, with special solemnity, celebrated the Apollinarian games, for the celebrating of which they also contributed money. These were instituted, namely, after the disaster at Cannae, from a prophecy of Marcius the seer, in whose books these words found are recited by Livy, book XXV, chapter 12: "Enemies, O Romans, if you wish to expel them..."

"I judge that games are to be vowed to Apollo, which are to be held graciously to Apollo each year, since the people shall give a portion from the public treasury, that private persons may contribute for themselves and their own; over the holding of these games the praetor shall preside." This prophecy having been discovered and laid before the Senate, the Fathers decreed that games should be vowed and held to Apollo by the praetor of the City. And when this praetor was about to hold them in the Circus Maximus, he proclaimed that the people should, during those games, contribute to Apollo as much as was convenient. At first these games were exhibited on no fixed day. But in the 546th year from the founding of the City, Publius Varus, the urban praetor, was ordered by a law brought before the people to fix a certain day. And so he himself first, says Livy in book XXVII, thus vowed and held them on the third day before the Nones of Quintilis. This was thereafter observed as the solemn day.

Now from two ancient calendars, the Maffeian and the Blanchinian, the text of Livy must be corrected, and instead of "the fourth before the Nones" we must read "the third before the Nones of Quintilis"; which is likewise confirmed by a third calendar, engraved on marble and found at Amiternum, published by Muratori, vol. I of the Thesaurus of Inscriptions, p. 491. Only one calendar—not, however, from marble, but published from an imperial manuscript by Lambecius, which is also later in age—is not to be preferred to the three already cited; it places it on the third before the Nones. But this could easily have happened through a slip of the copyists. The Bollandists, in vol. VI of June, part II, set beside this calendar, which Lambecius had first published, another hitherto unedited calendar composed by Polemius Silvius in the age of our Leo.

in which, just as in the marble calendars, the aforesaid games are assigned to the day before the Nones. That one day was at first appointed for these games, and that afterwards the same games were repeated, or rather continued over several days, Norisius gathered from several testimonies of the ancients who mention various and different days, in his Pisan Cenotaphs, dissertation 2, chapter 6, and before him Manutius, in his work On the Laws of the Romans, and in his Commentary on letter 4 of book XVI to Atticus. Moreover, from the Roman calendar, which, engraved in the first century of the Church, is preserved in the Capitoline Museum, and was published by Francesco Blanchini, in vol. II of Anastasius, p. 305, table C, and also from the Maffeian calendar, more than once reprinted, we learn that the Apollinarian games began on the day before the Nones.

[The Apollinarian Games began] on the Nones of July and continued down to the fourth day before the Ides, that is, to the twelfth day of the same month. In the Lambecian calendar these same Apollinarian games are also noted on the third day before the Ides of the same month, that is, on the thirteenth day. This is explained from Cicero, Letters to Atticus, Book 16, Letter 4, where he mentions a hunting-show on the day after the Apollinarian games, which was regarded as a kind of appendix to the Apollinarian games. Hence the Blanchinian calendar has on the third before the Ides 'In the Circus,' and the Maffeian, together with the Amiternine, on the same day, 'Games in the Circus.' When therefore this superstition had been turned by the ancient Fathers to a pious use, the first day of the collections seems to have been the second before the Nones of July, which is the day of the octave of Saints Peter and Paul;

and it had to be announced some time beforehand, so that the people might suitably prepare themselves for the collection; and hence it is most probable that these sermons were delivered between the birthday and the octave of the holy apostles. But if three of these sermons, taken up into the use of the divine offices, are found assigned in the aforesaid Vallicellan Lectionary to the second, third, and fourth Sundays after the birthday of the apostles, that happened at a later time, so that a Sunday might be assigned to each; just as also sermon 84, which pertains to the octave of the Apostles, is in the same Lectionary described as to be read on the sixth Sunday after their birthday. From these things, moreover, which we have thus far established, it is easy to indicate the year of each. For since Saint

[Leo the pontiff] presided over the Roman Church from the year 440 to the year 461, the first and fifth sermons, dated by distinct years in which the first collection is announced for a Sunday, are to be assigned to the year 441, or 447, or 452, or 458; for in these years the sixth day of July, from the Dominical letter E, fell on a Sunday. The second sermon, which announces the first collection for the second day of the week (Monday), is to be ascribed to the year 442, or 453, or 459, in which the second day before the Nones of July was a Monday; and by a similar reasoning the third sermon, which designates the third day of the week (Tuesday), is to be adjudged to the year 443, or 448, or 454, in which the same day was a Tuesday; and the sixth sermon, which sets forth the Sabbath (Saturday), was delivered in the year 446 or 457,

when the sixth day of July fell on a Saturday. The one day of the fourth weekday (Wednesday), which is designated by the fourth sermon, does not seem to agree with the other character of the same sermon. For this sermon was manifestly delivered when, at the beginning of the discovered error, action was being taken at Rome against the Manichaeans, whence in chapter 4 the holy pontiff stirs up his hearers to denounce these men to the presbyters. But this fits only the year 444 in the month of July, for in the year 443 the Manichaeans had not yet been detected in that month; and to bring this sermon down to a later date, as far as the year 449, or 455, or 460, in which the sixth day of July coincides with the fourth weekday designated by this sermon, the beginnings of the Manichaeism detected at Rome by no means allow.

This difficulty concerning another superstitious solemnity indicated by Leo, whose first day, and the first collection bound to it in the year 444, fell on the fourth weekday (Wednesday), had cast suspicion. But since no other pagan solemnity that would fittingly agree has been found by us, and since none of the remaining characteristics of these sermons suits any heathen superstition more than the Apollinarian games, which began on the sixth day of July, we judge that an error has crept into the notation of the fourth weekday in the fourth sermon. For it was very easy, through a slip of the copyists, to read or write 'fourth weekday' instead of 'fifth weekday' (Thursday), which indeed in the year 444 coincided with the second day before the Nones of July.

By many testimonies of the divine Scriptures we are taught how great is the merit of almsgiving and how great its power. For it is certain that each one of us does good to his own soul as often as he succors another's want by his mercy. Therefore, most beloved, our generosity ought to be prompt and ready among us, if we believe that each one bestows upon himself what he gives to the needy. For he lays up his treasure in heaven who feeds Christ in the poor man. Acknowledge, therefore, in this the kindness and the dispensation of the divine goodness. For to this end He willed that you should abound, that through you another might not be in need, and that through the ministry of your work He might free the poor man from the toil of want, and you from the multitude of sins.

O wondrous providence and goodness of the Creator, that by a single deed He willed that two should be helped! The coming Lord's Day, then, is to be the day of the collections. I exhort and admonish your holiness that each and every one of you be mindful both of the poor and of yourselves, and that, according to the possibility of your strength, you recognize Christ in the needy, who so commended the poor to us that He testified that He is clothed and received in them, and is fed—Christ our Lord (Matt. 25:40), who with the Father and the Holy Spirit lives and reigns unto ages of ages. Amen.